“Tru?” I said grudgingly.
“He’s devoted to Flo, and because she loves Gertie, he’s devoted to her as well. And don’t let Gertie fool you. She loves Tru.”
“They’ve got a funny way of showing it, the kind of talk they throw at each other.”
“You ever eat a walnut? Crack that hard shell and there’s sweet, soft meat inside.”
Flo called out gently, “Buck, would you play us a tune or two on your harmonica?”
“Don’t feel like playing,” I said.
“Then a story,” Emmy insisted.
“A story, Buck,” Truman Waters said and lifted his beer as if in encouragement.
“A story?” I said. “Sure, I’ll give you a story.”
* * *
THERE WERE ONCE four Vagabonds.
“The fairy princess, the giant, the wizard, and the imp,” Emmy said brightly. “And they’re on an odyssey to kill the Black Witch.”
“Exactly,” I said.
They’d traveled long and hard, and although the Black Witch had sent many foes to battle them, they were still unharmed because together they were invincible. There was magic among them that made them strong, and they knew that nothing could stand against them, not even all the evil powers of the Black Witch.
Although they didn’t understand it, this was their weakness. Their absolute certainty of themselves.
But the Black Witch understood it, understood that sending an army against them was useless, and she understood that there was another way to destroy them.
I paused for effect, and the gathering on the deck of the shanty boat was silent, until Emmy cried in distress, “What way?”
She sent a little fly to whisper in their ears as they slept. What the fly whispered to the giant was this: You are strong and do not need the others. And to the wizard: You are smart and do not need the others. And to the fairy princess: You are magical and do not need the others. But when the fly tried to whisper in the imp’s ear, the imp slapped at it and crushed it dead.
The next morning, the giant rose and looked at his friends and thought, What do I need with the others? I’m strong enough on my own. And the wizard opened his eyes and thought: What do I need with the others? I’m smart enough on my own. And the fairy princess, who’d always been kind, awoke and thought: My magic is powerful. What do I need with the others?
The imp alone understood the dark plot the Black Witch had hatched. “Comrades,” he cried. “Don’t be fooled. The only way to stand against all the evil in this land is to stand together.”
But the whispering of the little fly had done its job, and the other Vagabonds were deaf to the pleas of the imp.
The giant said, “I’m going to kill the Black Witch myself. I don’t need your help.”
The wizard said, “I’m going to kill the Black Witch.”
The fairy princess said, “No, I will kill the Black Witch.”
The three boastful Vagabonds eyed one another with suspicion and then with anger. They began to fight among themselves, and in the end, they destroyed one another. Only the imp, who’d stood sadly by and watched and could do nothing to stop them, survived.
He knew he could never kill the Black Witch by himself. For the rest of his days, he wandered the land alone, cursing the Black Witch and mourning his fallen companions.
After a few moments of silence, in which could be heard only the crackle of the fire burning in the cut-down barrel, Truman Waters barked, “Well, hell, that’s not a very happy story.”
“Not all stories end happily,” I said.
My dour tale had the effect I’d hoped, putting a dark cloud over the celebration on the Sweet Sue. Gertie stood and said, “We should all get to bed. Dawn comes early and hungry folks along with it.”
We trooped back to Gertie’s place, and Albert and Mose and Emmy and I settled ourselves in the shed for the night. Albert lit a candle and we sat on our bunks.
“Okay, imp,” Albert said, “tell us everything about one-eyed Jack.”
I recounted our chance meeting in the post office and my talk with Jack in the park.
Mose signed, A bullet in his heart and he’s still alive?
“He was dead,” Albert said. “I could have sworn it.”
“Only looked dead. The bullet missed his heart by half an inch.”
“He didn’t hate us, Odie?” Emmy asked.
“In fact, he was thankful, swore we’d changed his life. But here’s the thing. If Jack, who wasn’t even looking for us, found us, the Black Witch and her toady husband can find us here, too. We need to get back on the river and on our way to Saint Louis and Aunt Julia.”
In the flicker of the candlelight, I tried to read the faces of the others. I thought that once upon a time—not that long ago—I could have told you everything about each of them just from what I saw in their faces. But they seemed strangers to me now, their thoughts a mystery.
“Well?” I said.
“I’m staying,” Albert said. “I’m going to work for Tru.”
Mose nodded and signed, I’m staying.
Emmy said gently, as if she were afraid of hurting me, “I want to stay, too, Odie. I like Flo and Gertie.”
“Jack found me,” I said. “In a city of a million people, Jack found me, and he wasn’t even looking. The Brickmans are looking for us, looking hard.”
Albert said, “Next week, Mose and I will be going down the Mississippi on the Hellor. Maybe you and Emmy can come along. That should keep us safe for a while.”
“For a while. But the Black Witch will never give up. You know that.”
“I don’t know that. And neither do you. The Brickmans will forget about us eventually.”
“Not the Black Witch. She never forgets.”
“Okay,” Albert said. “You insisted this was a democracy. All those in favor of staying, raise your hands.”
I knew the outcome even before the others cast their votes, and when Albert snuffed out the candle, I lay fuming, unable to sleep.
I got up and left the shed and aimlessly walked the streets of the Flats, the houses dark on every side, the storefronts empty, the night air unmoving, hot and heavy. My shirt clung to the sweat on my back, which might have been from the humidity or the effort of the walk or the way everything inside me was twisted and uncertain. Something terrible was on the horizon, I could see that. Why couldn’t the others?
Then it hit me. The horrible truth I’d been unwilling to face. DiMarco’s murder. The shooting of Jack. Albert’s snakebite. The relentless pursuit by the Brickmans. This was all my doing, all my fault. This was my curse. I saw now that long before the Tornado God descended and killed Cora Frost and decimated Emmy’s world, that vengeful spirit had attached itself to me and had followed me everywhere. My mother had died. My father had been murdered. I was to blame for all the misery in my life and the lives of everyone I’d ever cared about. Only me. I saw with painful clarity that if I stayed with my brother and Mose and Emmy, I would end up destroying them, too. The realization devastated me, and I stood breathless and alone and terribly afraid.
I fell to my knees and tried to pray to the merciful God Sister Eve had urged me to embrace, prayed desperately for release from this curse, prayed for guidance. But all I felt was my own isolation and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Gradually, however, as I knelt on the West Side Flats under the glaring moon, a dark and cold understanding settled over me. When I finally brought myself up from the dirt of that unpaved street, I knew exactly what I had to do.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“HEY, BUCK JONES!” John Kelly jogged toward me in the dark. “Gonna help me deliver papers?” He clapped me on the back in greeting, then saw my face. “You okay?”
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Going where?”
“Saint Louis.”
“What about the others?”
I thought about my brother and Mose and Emmy. They believed they’d found their home. They were happy. I
f they came with me, I knew I would somehow destroy that happiness.
“I’m going alone.”
“How’re you gonna get there?”
I considered the canoe stored at the boatworks. It was a familiar vessel, a friend in a way, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle it alone on a river as big and as unknown to me as the Mississippi.
“You said trains go to Saint Louis from the rail yard.”
“Sure,” John Kelly said, warming to the idea. “You can hop a freight.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Naw, but I bet if we ask around the yard, someone’ll be able to point us right.”
“We? You’re not coming.”
“No, but I ain’t gonna desert you till I know you’re off safe. We’re pals.”
“Thanks,” I said, truly grateful. “I’ve got to grab something from Gertie’s, okay?”
I slipped into the shed and went to the bunk on which Emmy slept, slid my hand under the thin mattress, where for safekeeping, I’d put both my harmonica and the envelope containing the letter I’d written to Maybeth. I put these precious items into my pants pocket. I stood above Emmy, who’d had always been as cute as a fairy princess. In our long odyssey, she’d become far more than the orphaned daughter of Cora Frost. She’d become my sister. My sweet, little sister. I was tempted to lean down and plant a kiss on her forehead but was afraid of waking her. I turned and stared where Mose shared a bunk with Albert. His face was peaceful in the way that reminded me of the old Mose, the big Indian kid with a ready grin and a huge, simple heart. All that he’d learned about himself and all that he’d come to understand about the world he was born into had made his grin less frequent, but it was still there sometimes, and his heart would always be huge, I was certain, though never again quite so simple.
And then I considered my brother. There had been only one constant in my whole life, and that was Albert. He was at the beginning of all my memories, beside me on every road I’d traveled, had saved me from a thousand perils, knew my heart better than any other human being. Sister Eve had told me that what my brother wanted, his deepest wish, was to keep me safe. That had been his life, a long sacrifice for me. And I loved him for it. I loved him with every atom of my being, with a love so fierce it threatened my resolve. I wanted to lay my head on his shoulder, as I’d done a million times, and have him put his arm around me and tell me everything was all right and I was safe and we would always stay together, because that’s what brothers did. Leaving Albert was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I kissed my fingertips and touched them lightly to his chest over his heart, wiped away my tears, and stepped outside, where John Kelly was waiting.
* * *
“SOUTH,” ONE OF the men gathered around the small fire in the rail yard told us. “Any train goin’ that way will head you toward Saint Louie.” He pointed to where the rails and the river tunneled side by side into the night. “Make sure if the train turns east or west you hop off and catch another ’un. Stay south, son. Just stay south.”
We stood together, John Kelly and me, waiting for a train to rumble through, and it wasn’t long before one came slowly over the bridge from the direction of the Flats, heading the way the guy at the fire had pointed. John Kelly shook my hand, a man-to-man kind of parting.
“Good luck to you, Buck Jones,” he said.
“Thanks, John Kelly. But promise me something. My brother and the others, they’re going to ask you about me. I’d appreciate it if you kept your mouth shut.”
“You got it, partner. This is just between us.” He looked past me. “Open car coming. Better get ready.”
As the boxcar rolled past, I swung myself up through the open door, and when I was settled, poked my head out and signaled John Kelly that I was all right. He was a small silver statue in the moonlight, his hand lifted in a frozen goodbye.
I leaned back against the wall and stared through the broad, open door toward the Flats across the river, where all was dark. There were no streetlights yet, but there would be one day, and one day the roads would all be paved, and better houses with indoor plumbing would replace the ramshackle structures. The devastating spring floods would remain a constant, however, and in thirty years, the city of Saint Paul would decide, in the best interests of all its citizenry, to raze every building, while those whose lives had been shaped by the Flats could do nothing but stand by and weep as almost every remnant of their history vanished.
But I knew none of this in the summer of 1932, just shy of my thirteenth birthday, watching everything I loved move steadily away from me into the past. The train rolled slowly out of Saint Paul, gradually picking up speed, and as the engine thundered into the night, I knew that, more swiftly than was possible with any canoe, it was taking me to the place Sister Eve had told me was always in my heart, where all my questions would be answered and all my wandering would cease.
It was taking me home.
- PART SIX -
ITHACA
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
SLEEP WAS IMPOSSIBLE. I sat in the boxcar all night, staring at Old Man River, who was a constant companion. Towns came and went, but the river was always there, and the moon, too, a white, unblinking, all-seeing eye. I remembered Mose’s assurance to Emmy: Not alone. And I told myself this again and again and was grateful for the company of the river and the moon.
Near dawn, I finally fell asleep on the boxcar floor. I must have slept hard, because when I awoke, the train had stopped moving. I sat up, aching from the unforgiving wood that had been my mattress, and peered out the open door. We were in a rail yard not unlike the one I’d left the night before, though this one had tall grain elevators, like castle towers, rising beside it. Far up the line of cars, a man walked briskly along, looking under every freight car and peering into those with open doors. A bull, I figured, thinking of the stories I’d heard of the beatings at the hands of the cruel railroad police who patrolled the yards. I eased myself down from the boxcar and hightailed it.
The rail yard and much of the town lay below a high bluff. I found a small diner on a dingy street near the tracks, where the smell of frying bacon reached out, set a hook in my hunger, and reeled me in. In her dream state, Emmy had told me that I’d know when the time was right to use the money in my boot, and I was hungry—and lonely—and decided it was time. I took a stool at the counter. The woman back of it was thin, blond, tired-looking, but with a nice smile when she saw me sit down. She reached out and plucked a couple of bits of straw off my shirt.
“Where’d you sleep last night, hon? In a haystack?”
“Something like that.”
“Hungry?”
“You bet.”
“What’ll it be?”
“Eggs and bacon,” I said. “And toast.”
“How do you want those eggs?”
“Scrambled, please.”
“Please,” she said, still smiling. “Wish all my customers were that polite.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
A man who sat a few stools away said, “Dubuque, Iowa, son.” He winked at the woman behind the counter. “No haystack, Rowena. This boy slept in a boxcar or my name ain’t Otis.”
“That right, hon?” Rowena said. “Are you riding the rails?”
I didn’t know how they might feel about that, so I didn’t answer.
“Where are your folks?” Rowena asked.
“Dead.”
“Aw, sweetie, that’s a shame.”
“How long since you ate, son?” the man asked.
“Last night. I ate pretty good.”
“Right,” the man said, as if he thought I was lying but understood. “His breakfast is on me, Row.”
“I couldn’t,” I said.
“Look, son, I got a boy your age at home. If he was out there on his own, I’d want somebody to give him a hand.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Sir,” he said with a smile. “Somebody raised you right.”
I left the di
ner full, not just from the food but also from the kindness of those strangers. I couldn’t help wishing Albert had been with me to share the experience, something we could talk about warmly over a fire at night. I missed him terribly, and besides that, good things are made even better when you share the story of how they came to be. But whenever I thought about Albert—or Mose or Emmy—a cloud came over my happiness because I wasn’t certain if I would ever see them again.
* * *
I CAUGHT A freight train south and, because I’d hardly slept the night before, quickly nodded off and didn’t waken until late afternoon. When I looked out the boxcar, I saw that the train was rushing through cornfields, heading straight toward the sun, which was low on the horizon and red in the sky. We were going west. How long I’d been traveling in the wrong direction, I didn’t know. I kicked myself and swore out loud and prayed that the train would stop soon. But it didn’t. It rumbled on past sunset and then moonrise and finally slowed as the lights of a city appeared on the horizon.
The train rolled to a halt amid a large network of rails and idled freight cars, and as soon as I was able, I leapt to the ground. I tried to get my bearings, to see if there were any cars coupled to engines pointed in the direction I’d just come from, but it was a maze of tracks and it was night and I was lost.
A hundred yards away, at the edge of the yard, I spotted the glow of a small fire. I thought of the welcoming fires in Hopersville and of the man beside the fire in the Saint Paul rail yard who’d pointed me in the right direction and had advised me in a friendly way just to stay south. I crossed the yard to a shallow gully where a small thread of water ran and followed it to a culvert where the fire had been laid.
There were two of them, shabby-looking men, one asleep on a blanket and the other sitting up, bent toward the flames, a bottle in his hand. That bottle should have made me think twice. I approached slowly, not wanting to startle anyone, but the man with the bottle turned suddenly in my direction and tensed as if for a fight.
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